Folder limits increased in Web Mail

Up until today Web Mail had a limit of 40 folders, counting the default folders plus any you created yourself.
Many users asked for the ability to create more, so after looking into this I was able to get this increased to 200. That should be sufficient to satisfy just about all users. The change was made this evening and is in effect now for all mailboxes.
If you have never created a new folder in Web Mail, to do so you simply click the link to Folders on the left side of Web Mail.

This will take you to the Folders page where you can create new folders, delete the contents of any folder with a single click, and delete or rename any folders you created. If you use up the 200 allowed folders, the button at the bottom of the page to “Create Folder” will disappear until you delete a folder to bring you back under the limit.

28 thoughts on “Folder limits increased in Web Mail”

recent related problem I have not been able to solve — when I login onto email, my folders do not come up at all??? Thoughts?

If I understand your question correctly, you are not seeing your list of folders on the left side of Web Mail and can only view the Inbox. If that is the problem, then go to your folder management page by putting in this URL after you are logged in to Web Mail:http://webmail.earthlink.net/wam/folders.jsp
That will show you all your folders. Look and see if you have created one with any special characters in the folder name. That might be breaking the folder display, so rename any folder like that to use just letters or numbers and see if the problem is fixed. If so, please respond back here telling me what character caused it to break, so we can fix it.Email Guy

If email comes in to me in html format, I get an opportunity to compose a reply in the same, but if it comes in plain text, or if I want to compose a message, I just get plain text composition.
Is there an option hidden somewhere that I have not found where I can choose html composition either all the time or when I want it?

It’s at the top of the compose page, click on “Color and Graphics”. That feature will be improved soon (in the next release).Email Guy

Why can’t I compose messages in HTML? I’ve checked the blog and the Help files, but my problem isn’t mentioned. There is no “color & graphics” option when I write a message, so I’m stuck with plain text only. I’m using Mac Safari.
Thanks!

This is a minor niggle: if you’re reading the last message in a folder that has more than one message in it (and viewed with the default sort) and you opt to move that message to another folder, instead of Webmail moving the message and then going to the new last message in the folder, it always generates the error:
The message(s) that you selected does not exist any more in this folder. (The message may have expired, or you may have already moved or deleted it.)
and then throws you out of the folder into the top level view.
I guess essentially the algorithm just needs to check if it’s moved the last message and then go to Previous rather than Next. I wouldn’t have thought that it would be a major task to fix.
Best,
Peter

We’re aware of this bug and it’s on the list. You can read the exact circumstances here, and some ways to work around it.Email Guy

INCREASE YOIR STORAGE SIZE!!! All others are up to 4GB while you only enable 400MB. Also, one can DL the inbox to another program in shot, but what about all the “SENT” emails!!! Currently, you have to do this one by one which is time consuming. And bc of that, I am running our of space.
Thanks,
Cindy

I have been using Total access on my xp laptop for as long as I have had Earthlink(at least 10 years) and loved it. Now with a new Vista computer after many phone calls and hours online with a person I have learned that Vista and total Access down work, so now I have accepted using web Mail to get/send emails. I have no problem once I learned that is the way I must do for now, and all my email addresses are there, but I can’t seem to get my group contact emails to work. Wondering what I am doing wrong. The groups show when I display my address listing, but don’t when I enter the group name on my address to line. I am not a techi, so know there must be something I just don’t know how to use. Any help is much appreciated.

What you want to do is, click on the little link to the left of the To: line (clicking on the “To:” itself) and that will bring up a popup window of your contact list, including any groups. Then select the group name there, and click the Insert button. That will put all addresses that are part of that group on your To line.
We don’t currently support just typing the Group name on the To line, but we are going to add that feature.Email Guy

Hello Again, E-mail Guy!
For those who use Firefox 1.5 and newer (current version is 2.0.0.7, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/), additional speed improvement inside Web Mail can be achieved by the combined effect of:
1) installing the Firefox extension (a.k.a. Add-On) named “Adblock Plus” (from Firefox, go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 and click the “Install Now” button) followed by subscribing to:
2) EasyList USA and EasyElement USA, a pair of filter subscriptions.
To subscribe, once Adblock Plus is installed, restart Firefox, then simply go to http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions where you will find a table with links to install a variety of filter subscriptions. EasyList USA and EasyElement USA are the first 2 items in the table. If you would like some additional protection for your privacy, you might consider “ABP Tracking Filter”, found further down in the table. (If you are NOT in the USA, or you use other languages in addition to English, you may find a more appropriate filter further down in the table.)
By getting these 2 (or more) subscriptions you avoid needing to configure Adblock yourself and benefit from the combined experience of thousands of users who’ve spent literally years fine tuning the filters.
For reference, and to learn more about EasyList USA, EasyElement USA and ABP Tracking Filter, you can optionally go to http://easylist.adblockplus.org/
BTW, Adblock Plus also works with SeaMonkey (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/) & Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/).
I Hope This Helps,
Brad
P.S.: If you add a feature that lets us download a folder full of e-mails, even if it only worked for 1 specific folder, I would definitely use it. Right now it is a major pain to save e-mails one at a time!

Re: PLAIN or COLOR AND GRAPHICS webmail default options (message above dated 8/28/07)
Will this feature be available for ELN web mail onMacintosh OS-10+? I sure hope so. It will save me having to buy a PC, too.

I have been reading with interest the questions posed by John Nahrwold andelaborated upon by Edward Syrett and Email Guy. This is a problem I have been facing for years.
I am a minister; I sit on various boards, commissions, committees, each of which uses email extensively to communicate among the members. In some cases, the members are scattered geographically, so it is the only logical way to present current information to everyone at once.
For each of these bodies, I have a separate folder under the INBOX umbrella. It would be enormously helpful to me to be able to download a single folder to a (transportable) USB drive which I could carry to meetings and meeting sites regardless of the geographic location. There are other reasons I would like to have these email records stored on a moveable storage device. Other members of these boards, etc. have expressed the same need, and we compare notes to see if anyone has an email that facilitates it.
I do not use another email management system. I have just acquired a new computer running Vista, and I do not know yet whether there is a way to accomplish this using Vista’s features. I do know that Earthlink’s Total Access does not run well with Vista.
I do not want to hear about POP and IMAP, etc. I just want to be able to tell my computer to take a folder of email off the server and put it on another drive – and not just download to the hard drive. I need the option of specifying where the file is downloaded.
Is this really so extremely complicated? Granted my dinosaur era programming knowledge goes back to Fortran, COBOL, BASIC, and DOS, but it seems to me that this is doable.
PLEASE try to give us this feature. Clearly several of us need it.
Thanks for your patience in letting me rant.

It sounds like your needs would be better served by using the email software on your computer, which stores the messages in folders on your hard drive rather than on our server. Web Mail views messages stored on our server, and does not copy them to your computer. On Vista, simply set up the “Windows Mail” program, using the settings found at the link below. Then all your messages will be easily accessible on your drive, and easy to copy to any portable storage device.
Instructions for setting up Windows Mail in Vista are here.Email Guy

I hate to sound like such a newbe, BUT, having Earthlink is great and getting my mail from anywhere is really want i want. I will say it is not hard to miss that no matter what computer i come to for checking my web based email account the LOAD times are soo slow. I have noticed a bit of a faster response in FOXFIRE but in IE its incredibly slow. Is there some thing that can be done to make this Faster? Example. I log into the account. After hitting Enter.. it can take as long as 25 seconds for the page to load. mind you.. on ANY computer. my home PC is XP on a 3 gightz processor with ONE gig ram and running a 700 some DSL line. THIS shouldnt be. On my friends PC its the same with a bit slower DSL line. WORK, is a high end T3 i think line and the computers are close to my home on processor and more than a gig or ram too. YET, if i use linux and foxfire the pages load much faster. There must be a solve. THIS IS my ONLY complaint… other than this.. the set up is great , the filters are great, the extra folders are even better.. even the use of MOCK accounts to protect your privacy. AWSOME. BUT every page load.. checking a link for spam or possible spam.. old mail or saved in a folder.. loads are over 15 seconds or more. HELP? PLEASE?

This isn’t typical and you should be getting better performance on DSL. I can make a couple of suggestions for you to try.
First, if you have a great many messages stored in your Web Mail Inbox folder (hundreds or thousands) then you need to create a new folder and get the old messages out of your Inbox. The larger it is, the slower it will load. Click Folders on the left side of the page and then create a new folder by typing in a name at the bottom of that page and then Save it. Then go back to the Inbox, use the “check all” link or the topmost checkbox to select all the messages, and then use the “Move To” selector to put them in the folder you created. You can speed this process up by first setting the “Messages Dispayed” (per page) up to 200 in Preferences / Web Mail Options. If you have a lot of messages to move then 200 at a time will be a lot quicker than 10 at a time.
Next, click Preferences / Web Mail Options and make sure you have the setting for “Secure Session” turned Off. You have no need for that unless you are on wireless or a LAN, and you aren’t. It will slow you down a lot. Also change the setting for Messages Displayed (per page) back to 10 or 20 now. That will also speed up the page load a lot.
Last, clear the cache in your browser settings (called Temporary Internet Files in IE) and then restart your browser. It will load slower on the very first time after clearing the cache, but then should be faster. Your browser cache can sometimes get bloated and slow, especially if you have it set to a very large size. Most users should keep it down to no more than about 50-100 MB in the cache settings. But by default some browsers set themselves up to use a percentage of your drive space. One percent of an 80GB drive is about 800 MB and is much much too large a browser cache for good performance.
Also make sure that the browser cache hasn’t been turned off. That would really kill your performance. In IE make sure that it isn’t set to “Never” under Tools / Internet Options / General / Settings. I recommend the Automatic setting unless you understand the other settings and have a reason to change it. In Firefox the cache settings are under Tools / Options / Advanced / Network. In Firefox it is always on as long as the size is not set to zero. I recommend setting it to about 50MB.
Let me know if these things help.Email Guy

Subject: PLAIN or COLOR AND GRAPHICS webmail default options.
First thanks to all for getting those changes and enhancements implemented such as OPTIONS (Choices of exit and start pages), the new enhanced folders expansion, the forthcoming mailbox size increase, etc. Things we’ve all been looking forward to and expect in email systems of today. Thanks to Earthlink for getting these implemented – keep it up.
A NOTES and CALENDAR feature such as that unmentionable other (Y a h – choo!) excuse me provider would be nice also.
Some time ago I made mention of the possibility of making an OPTION where as users would be able to select which default in messaging they might prefer (PLAIN/COLOR AND GRAPHICS).
It’s present in a number of other webmail based systems and I can understand the reason for carrying both although COLOR and GRAPHICS (aka HTML) is standard much of today.
Is there any possibility of getting an addition to OPTIONS at the very least so that USERS can have a different default other than PLAIN?

Yes, that is coming soon, to be able to set your default compose options, including saving your font preferences.Email Guy

Regarding Cutting and pasting pictures in webmail…
Ref: Posted by: Bill | August 17, 2007 1:45 PM | (7)
“I don’t understand the Q&A about insertion of photos not being supported, when in graphics mode I can paste photos into the body. Is that different?”
“Yes, but that usually doesn’t work either. We will be adding a feature where you can easily insert pictures by just selecting an image file. If you can currently cut-and-paste and the recipient actually receives the image, would you mind telling me what browser and OS you are running, and what program you are copying the images from when you do this? It might be a helpful tip for other users.” Email Guy
From Russ – (09/28/07) The reason it works for some and not others is most lkely due to the fact that the object (image) pasted can later be referenced or found on or across the Internet by both parties sending and recieving. An example of this is a non passworded/protected webpage, server, blog, etc accessable by both across the Internet. I have seen it where the sender pastes an image and what appears to be available to them only because the image is then immeadiately accessable to his/her PC, but later is not accessable to the recipient and that portion of the email is blank or red-x since the image is now not accessable to the recipient.
It shouldn’t be browser or OS dependent unless your using a really old browser and or OS.
You can get it to work if you keep in mind to make sure the picture image is accessable to both parties (central server etc), the old copy/paste (highlight – copy then paster into your email – just be sure to be in grpahics mode not simple text). Certainly adding a feature where you can easily insert pictures by just selecting an image file would provide this and make things a lot easier for folks.
But that’s the answer to the trick and the reason it works for some and not others !
Hope it helps
-Russ-

Regarding the 1 GB storage capability EarthLink POP accounts – do you know if that limit will also be increased on web hosting email accounts, which like the current @earthlink.net accounts, are limited to 100MB, only with no obvious method for increasing the 100 MB in any way. Presently the basic hosting plan offers 100 POP accounts with 100 MB storage each, which in theory is 10 GB of mail storage.
For some users who are basically addicted to a web-based method of accessing and managing their business email, it would be much more useful to have say a couple standard options of 10 POP accounts of 1 GB storage each, 20 at 500 MB each, etc., or perhaps offer an option to tailor the mail storage configuration on a web hosting account to meet a particular web hosting customers’ needs.

Thanks for the increase in folders! This helps a lot.
I notice your reference to an increase in mail space to 1 GB “very soon”.
Do you have a target date for that 1 GB? And, will that be for each of the email addresses that a user has available under their Earthlink account? For example, I have up to 8 available. So, that would mean a total of 8 GB available?
Thanks for the upgrade and I can hardly wait for more storage!
Ron

Yes, it will be for every mailbox. I can’t give you a firm date yet, as the migration for all users will take a few months.Email Guy

Pursuant to John Nahrwold’s question, let me try rephrasing his request. Currently, the INBOX has a special feature possessed by no other folder: I can download from it, using my POP3 client. But it usually contains a hodgepodge of recently-arrived email. What I’d like to do is tell WebMail which folder should have the magic OUTBOX token which tells my POP3 client to download from it rather than from the folder named INBOX. That way, I can pull down all the messages I’ve saved in a topic-specific folder, and then move them into the corresponding subfolder of my POP3 client’s “saved mail” folder.
Of course, I have a workaround, but it’s awfully cumbersome. I move all contents of my INBOX to an “Inbox Backup” folder on WebMail. Then I move the stuff I really want to download from the topic-specific WebMail folder into the INBOX. Then I fire up my POP3 client (Mozilla Thunderbird, specifically), do the download and client-side move, then get back on WebMail and move the contents of “Inbox Backup” back into INBOX. And it’s only safe to do this in the wee small hours of Monday morning when none of the services I subscribe to will be using the OTHER magic attribute of the INBOX folder, namely that it is the arrival point for all incoming SMTP messages. That latter attribute is what makes the name INBOX appropriate. But I see no reason on earth or in protocol RFC’s why the INBOX must also be the POP3 OUTBOX. There is a major conflict between these two purposes, in our current world where POP3 is used only for client-side archiving of email that no longer needs to be accessible from every machine on which I can connect to WebMail.
John and I are not asking for IMAP. What we are asking for is an enhancement to WebMail which would allow us to override the default OUTBOX (currently INBOX) for future POP3 requests to the server, on an account-by-account basis. Since the POP3 client has no knowledge of server-side folders, that should be feasible at the protocol level. We would still have to do the client-side move to the proper client-side folder, but that’s a piece of cake compared with all the server-side nonsense we currently have to go thru.

Yes, I suppose a scheme could be constructed where we could rename the “Inbox” to something else, then rename another folder to “Inbox”. Or maybe just modify our POP server to “think” another folder of your choice is the “Inbox”. So you are really asking to have a way to automate what you are already doing manually. It is possible and would be nice feature. I understand it is cumbersome the way you have to work around it now. But the real solution is still IMAP access to the mailbox, rather than put in a hack like this to overcome the limitations of the POP3 protocol. That is what IMAP is for, to be able to manage server-side folders from a software client (and it adds other enhancements that can’t be done in POP).
I’ll look into the feasibility of allowing you to change which folder is your “Inbox”, but I don’t expect this will rise high on the roadmap priorities we have right now, as there are so many other improvements we have coming up for Web Mail already. I think it may be more feasible that we decide to offer IMAP access sometime in the future. But there is a reason that only one major ISP currently offers IMAP. It’s less efficient and more costly by a huge factor, and is really more suited as an enterprise protocol and not a large-scale ISP protocol. The one ISP that offers it evolved into it from their closed network and proprietary email client in the old days, they didn’t really just make a choice to replace POP. It’s a difficult move for anyone else to do.
Much of the need for this will be mitigated very soon when we change all mailbox quotas to a GB and higher. Then you won’t have as much need to archive stuff locally.
Thanks for the suggestion.Email Guy

What happened to the email I am saving in my in box view? I only found my 3 new messages.

I looked at your mailbox logs and your messages are being retrieved and deleted by the other email software you are running on your computer (not Web Mail). You will find the messages in that software now.
See this FAQ for more help.Email Guy

I don’t understand the Q&A about insertion of photos not being supported, when in graphics mode I can paste photos into the body. Is that different?

Yes, but that usually doesn’t work either. We will be adding a feature where you can easily insert pictures by just selecting an image file. If you can currently cut-and-paste and the recipient actually receives the image, would you mind telling me what browser and OS you are running, and what program you are copying the images from when you do this? It might be a helpful tip for other users.Email Guy

Thanks for the additional folders, that has been a real irritation. I definately appreciate the change.
With this method of commenting and making suggestions, I expect you will get more and more feedback.
I certainly agree with Mike’s comment earlier, about increasing the storage space, providing full text search, and removing ads from email I am paying Earthlink to receive. Adding the search would be an enhancement effort, while the other two are policy change and implementation.
I am quite irritated(especially today) by the space limitations and the poor implementation of the management software. For my own reasons I have a lot of email saved. I am paying for 400 mb of space, and currently it is at 80% of capacity. This means with almost every email of any size I get an automated notice (which takes 3kb) that my mailbox is near full, and I should empty it or buy more space. But I am at the Earthlink max already, the stream of warnings does not help, just irritates. I would consider buying more space if it were available, even though Yahoo and Google have 1 Gig for FREE. Earthlink can do better.
But there’s another worse irritation, which was just triggered. I just received 4 emails adding up to 22mb, which pushed me to 89%. Read that again: EIGHTY NINE, not NINETY NINE percent of 400 mb. At this point I get more email saying my mialbox is FULL, and in fact additinal email is bounced. 400 x 89% = 356mb, so I can’t even use 44mb of the 400 I am paying for!

It sounds like the quota display in Web Mail is not showing you the correct number, and there is a known issue where it can sometimes get slightly off over time depending on how you use it. Know that the warning messages are correct even if the quota bar is not correct. So the mailbox is actually full. I can rebuild the index in your mailbox so that the quota bar will be back in sync, but this will reset all messages to an “unread” state in Web Mail. Let me know if that is what you want, by emailing me at email-guy at earthlink dot net.Note: that address only accepts messages I have specifically asked for in advance and all others are deleted immediately.
Later this year we will begin migrating all mailboxes to a 1GB minimum quota, and users paying for more space will be getting 2GB or more.Email Guy

Thanks for increasing the # of folders. Now…when are you going to get rid of the ads on the right SIDE of the page and put them back on top where they belong?????
When they are on TOP of the email page, you can scroll down and not be distracted. When they are on the SIDE, they impact my view…there is one especially annoying ad for a Best Buy gift card that has literally caused me a migraine because of the sudden flashing that appears when this ad appears. Sounds silly but anyone who has had migraines knows that this type of thing can trigger an attack. If it was on TOP, I can scroll down. On the SIDE, I have no choice but to stop work and minimize the screen until it is gone.
I’m ready to switch because of this disruptive change in the layout of the webmail page…
Thanks.

I’m trying to find and get this ad removed, due to complaints. In the meantime here’s a tip, narrow your browser window slightly down from full screen, and you can hide the ad since the message list won’t get smaller after a point. Shhhh…. the ad folks won’t like seeing this advice.Email Guy

Would appreciate a function to download folders to a local hard drive. Sometimes I need to share info with colleagues, do topic or word searches, etc. and would like to have local copies of folder info. Will this be available any time soon? Why is it not available now?

You could use a POP mail client such as Outlook Express or EarthLink Mailbox. Those store messages on your hard drive. Web Mail views email you have stored on the server. What you are really describing is IMAP access to your mailbox, which allows you to synchronize folders between the server copy and a local copy. There are no plans to add IMAP access anytime soon.Email Guy

Hello, e-Mail Guy!
Re.: “limit of 40 folders … increased to 200″
Wow! I figured we’d be lucky to get 80!
“That should be sufficient to satisfy just about all users.” I agree.
I’ve already created a handful of greatly needed new subfolders to clean up my most troublesome folder.
Thank You!
Brad
P.S. Ironically, in the last few weeks I’ve done a major cleanup of my folders, reducing the contents from 28 MB to 14 MB. As an unexpected side effect, it also reduced my need for additional folders…